net critique blog by Geert Lovink
By Inte Gloerich, October 1, 2020
Our friends over at the Berliner Gazette are organizing a series of events called SILENT WORKS about hidden labor in AI-capitalism. In the lead up to the central conference and exhibition, they share the following update: Big tech is using the Covid-19 pandemic to take over Berlin. Amazon, for instance, one of the biggest profiteers [...]
By Tommaso Campagna, October 1, 2020
The mandate of exclusive pay-wall access for scientific articles is nothing new inside research routines and academic cycles. This began after the influx of virtual repositories in the 90’s information-rerun era [1]. However, the debates on whether or not these contents should become part of the public domain in contemporary network societies, have arrived (alongside [...]
By Jess Henderson, September 28, 2020
When did creative work become so boring? How did ‘digital-first’ come to dominate everything? …and why is nobody talking about it? Offline Matters is a handbook for anybody experiencing digital overload in their lives and creative work. Part insider exposé, part worker-manual, this book is for any creative seeking help on: Navigating the possibility of [...]
By Miriam Rasch, August 27, 2020
It is with joy that we present Let’s Get Physical: A Sample of INC Longforms, 2015-2020 (INC Reader #13), which gathers thirteen essays that have been published in our INC Longform series over the past years. The book is available for free as pdf and on paper, epub to follow soon. Below you can read [...]
By Geert Lovink, August 17, 2020
We know how it sounds when the voice of those who are absent animate their words as we read them, as if from the inside of the text. How long after a disappearance is a voice activated through a postcard, a note on a piece of paper or a book? I reach for Bernard Stiegler’s [...]
By Miriam Rasch, August 17, 2020
This summer Eurozine launched their podcast titled Gagarin. I was invited to join Réka Kinga Papp, editor-in-chief- of Eurozine, to talk about my book Frictie and the accompanying Eurozine essay Friction and the aesthetics of the smooth. Listen to the episode over at Eurozine or find it in your podcast app. “What does the worship [...]
By Geert Lovink, August 11, 2020
Agony and the Ecstasy: Zoom Burnout, Teletopics and the Age of Covid by Patrick Lichty The era of Covid lockdown is Zoom-time. Although at the time of this writing, the crest of the first wave is starting to pass, its impact is evident. In over three months of lockdown, stay at home, 24/7 Zoom culture [...]
By Geert Lovink, July 22, 2020
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.” Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government. Please check the CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS for the new issue of LAVA – Letters from the Volcano! https://lavaletters.org/ & https://lavaletters.org/call-def.pdf We can’t breathe. After 50 years of neoliberal barbarism – which has accelerated the necrotic [...]
By Inte Gloerich, July 8, 2020
Written by: Pamela Nelson Sewing is an act of mindfulness. When we embroider or engage in other creative activities like painting or sculpting, our perception of time can become distorted and give the illusion of ‘slowing down’, as discussed in ‘The Restructuring of Temporality During Art Making’ by Ariana van Heerden. In a fast paced, [...]
By Geert Lovink, June 27, 2020
After the fifth episode of the Selfies Under Quarantine series, here, at the Institute of Network Cultures, we discussed how such online courses, but also lectures and debates, could make more use of the video essay form. If there is such as thing as the ‘visual turn’ in education (in re: popular culture), away from [...]
